By Any Other Name
by crazymadjo
Summary: Cuddy contemplates marriage to House. Mid season seven.


**By Any Other Name**  
><strong>by crazymadjo<strong>

**Story takes place mid-season seven.**

Lisa Cuddy set down her morning coffee and glared at the teetering stack of papers and folders threatening to spill out of her inbox. It was remarkably similar to the teetering stack she faced several months previously, the stack that Wilson had gestured to and promised, "If you hired an assistant, you wouldn't have this waiting for you every morning!"

She smiled and suppressed the urge to come up with an excuse to call Wilson into her office, just so he'd see what little difference having an assistant actually made. Besides, she knew it wasn't really fair. Her assistant had done a lot with this work. Checked it, processed it, even filled most of it out. All she really had to do was review and sign. The fact that the reviewing took nearly as long as the doing ... well, that wasn't Wilson's fault. In fact, she felt her smile fade, he'd probably say something like, "Most administrators just give them a quick glance and sign." Well, she wasn't most administrators. If something wasn't right about those papers, it wasn't the assistant's ass on the line.

_No._ She brushed that thought aside as well. It wasn't about culpability, it was about responsibility. Not "responsibility" in the sense of duty or job-requirement, but the kind so ingrained in her blood, her bones, it was physically impossible to pass it off to someone else. It was the same responsibility that drove her back to this desk the one time she tried to leave it in Dr. Cameron's hands.

She sighed, took a sip of her coffee, and pulled the first folder from the stack. Fifteen minutes later, after making three notes and two phone calls, she signed her name: "Lisa ... Cuddy."

She hesitated before writing her last name. Two weeks. Just two more weeks before "Cuddy" would be legally replaced. She reached for the next folder in the box, then hesitated. She glanced over at the pad of Post It notes next to her stapler. _No, forget it. That's just silly._ She picked up the folder, opened it, and then glanced at the Post It pad again. _Oh, what the hell._

With guilty pleasure, she peeled off one page, stuck it down firmly in front of her, and biting her tongue trying not to giggle, quickly wrote, "Lisa House."

"Oh, GOD!" She crumbled it up and chucked it at the trashcan. It missed, and it bounced off the rim and rolled across the office floor. She suppressed the urge to chase it. All her life she had frowned on her 'girlie-girl' friends and classmates who spent hours writing variations of their imagined married names all over their Bay City Rollers adorned notebooks. "Mary Lou Smith", "Mary Lou Jones-Smith" "Mrs. John Smith", with a heart or a star to dot the i's, naturally. Cuddy always felt embarrassed for those girls, wrapping all their ambitions and dreams up in some guy. Building their identities around him. That just wasn't her. Not then, and most definitely not now!

And yet ... she glanced at the crumpled paper that had settled against the leg of a nearby chair. There was a more practical (and therefore much less fun) problem she had yet to face. Everybody she knew outside of her family called her 'Cuddy'. House called her 'Cuddy'! She imagined him struggling to change the habit of decades, awkwardly calling her "Cu-lisa" as he tried to adjust. She winced.

Maybe she could just tell him to go on calling her Cuddy? Tell everybody? Hmm. That could work, but in that case ... she stood up, and walked over to pick up the crumpled paper. Why not just keep her last name, legally? It would certainly create a lot less confusion in the hospital, as well as amongst her friends, and even with House himself.

And yet ... she felt a flutter of warning in the pit of her stomach. A flutter she had learned through long, hard experience not to ignore. It would hurt him. She knew this instinctively, and didn't question it. He would hide it perfectly, he would never complain or let on, but it would hurt him. He probably wouldn't understand why it did. He'd probably tell himself that he had no right to be hurt, that it was pointless and silly. And he'd be right.

But it would still hurt.

Cuddy sat back down, and smoothed out the Post It note. She ran her fingers across the signature. Lisa House. Lisa ... H-O-U-S-E. She realized she was grinning again.

The image of her mother's face rose up in her mind. "What are you smirking about? Don't you realize you're making the biggest mistake of your life?" _Oh, please, mom. The only mistake people make in their lives is not living their lives._ She'd figured that out long ago. "But what about Rachel?" her mental-mom prodded. "Can he love her? Does he even like her?"

"She likes him." Cuddy answered out loud, and automatically glanced over at the picture on the desk of her young daughter. "It's a start." She sighed. It was the least perfect aspect of an already less than perfect situation.

_But what's perfect? Ever?_ Again, she cast her mind back to the Mary Lou Smiths of her past. They expected perfection in their married lives. Planned on it. Counted on it. She wondered how many of them were divorced, now. Or trapped in miserable marriages. Or maybe even happy, though perhaps not the same way they expected. Maybe even a better way than they expected?

She was already once-divorced herself, which House had discovered to her embarrassment and relief. It had been a lark from the start. A rebellion. An experiment. Neither of them had expected it to last. Neither was reaching for perfection. It was ... fun. But, she reflected, it was ultimately pointless. She hadn't grown or learned anything from the experience. She never even thought of him anymore.

Not something she could say about Gregory House. Since their brief affair back in college, she had thought of him quite often. She had even, she admitted to herself, been guilty of comparing her subsequent encounters to him. They always came up short, in one way over another. Always. Over the years, she decided she was exaggerating her memory of him. Building up an ideal nobody could possibly beat. When he wandered back into her life, she gradually discovered that she was right ... and yet in some ways, also wrong. He wasn't the same man she remembered from those days. In some ways, he was worse. Less open, less free. But in other ways he was so much better.

But not, she was quick to remind herself, perfect. "Thank God," she added out loud.

She folded the Post It note, and tucked it in a drawer, something to think more about later, and got back to work. The day passed quickly. The inbox emptied slowly.

House entered her office and limped up to the desk. Cuddy smiled up at him, and forced herself to set aside her work. It would still be there tomorrow. "Did you make the reservations?" She stood up and retrieved her jacket.

"Uh huh." He moved around to her side of the desk and gently took the jacket away from her, then held it out for her to put on. This led to a backwards hug, a bit of a struggle as she twisted around in his arms to face him, and a very long kiss. She beamed up at him, then moved towards the door.

"Lisa."

The flutter in her stomach exploded into full blown butterflies that shot up her body, and straight to her head. Before she could even register her reaction, she automatically turned back. "What?"

He was holding out her purse to her. She'd almost walked out without it. "Oh." She gave an embarrassed laugh and accepted the purse. Then they just stood, face to face, looking at each other. His face was blank, except ... if she hadn't been memorizing and cataloging his expressions for the past several years she would have missed it, but she just caught a slight upturn in his mouth, gone in an instant. She felt tears in her eyes and fought them back down.

Finally, House gestured to the door with nod. He didn't take his eyes off of her. "You ready?"

She felt herself grin again, the biggest of the day. "Not really. But I'm working on it."

He averted his gaze, moved past her, opened the door, then held it for her. "Yeah," he answered as they walked out together. "Me, too."

End


End file.
